


Cacophony

by AikoIsari



Series: Symphony [1]
Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon World Series
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Animal Transformation, Gen, Human Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-12 11:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2108172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AikoIsari/pseuds/AikoIsari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was something to shadows that he didn't like, something to darkness that he abhorred. Perhaps that was why he watched her so warily now. It was the monster in him, he supposed. [Told in vignettes] First part of Symphony, character study</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ladies and gentlemen and others, I present to you another fic that doesn't make sense to me. Told in vignettes much like At Peace was, unlike At Peace, it is not told in any chronological order. It is detailing many points of the Dawn/Dusk games, which I'm using elements of both continuities because I've played both and it's not too hard. Also, I am posting five at a time. Because it needs to be finished by Saturday. Because reasons.
> 
> It will hopefully make sense when it's done. I'm not sure. If it doesn't, I swear I will go back and rewrite it.

I.

"You didn't have to do it like that."

She raised an eyebrow, wiping her blade with a worn red cloth. "It wasn't fatal," she pointed out. "Your Flare is too slow as it is."

He scowled, releasing the energy that continued its lazy circling around his waist. Not that it wasn't true, she had always been faster than him, since the day they had met, since the walls, since everything really. He just hated being reminded of it. It wasn't like he was incompetent. She knew that.

Still, the fact remained. Night was stronger than Day in these missions.

Give him a midday chase through Resistor Jungle on nothing more than adrenaline and Digiar level one-point-five and he would be better than her, better at ripping through foliage and sending a battle-ready blaze of fire that had the quarry shrieking and begging for arrest. Give him justice and divinity and power.

None of this night watch, slithering behind walls, quick cuts to the throat trash data nonsense that she took on with fervor and pride. Proud of being a lynx, a harmless looking rabbit with goggles until you took off the hat and saw the monster.

At least with him, you could tell he was a monster.

Right?

So, knowing this, he bit his lip and kept his mouth shut, still looking at her, still staring at her with that hostility of a lion at the sight of the ragged run rabbit. Again, she ignored him, adjusting her weapon to rest smoothly in one hand. "For Ygg's sake, put that thing away!" he snapped, looking at his Digivice with its glowing screen. "Someone might see you."

She did put the axe away, only to replace it with the familiar gloves that made his right cheek ache in memory. Then she smiled through locks of permanently purple hair, and jammed her hat back on her head.

"Come on," Sayo said to him, her clothes of blues and purples and grays a patchwork quilt of the digitized evening sky. "We have a report to make to Clavis."

Koh glared. "At least say his name right."


	2. II

II.

They fought in a tournament once.

Back when he was just an ordinary Tamer and his black and orange digital device signaled nothing other than his permission to use the  _Burst_ Program in case of an emergency like being trapped in a landslide. It had happened once. That was the last time he went to Task Canyon without the backup numbers in his digivice.

Simply put, that was  _not_  a mission clear.

But he met her on the battlefield, where it was just simulation play and nothing but pride was at stake. She had looked at him with mild interest and little more and it made him squirm and get angry because you just didn't _do_ that, not after half your fellow rookies were smoked by this newcomer (him) in a matter of minutes.

Even knowing that, she didn't react with very much other than adjusting the gloves she wore, the gloves with peacefully smiling crescent moons that even before she had punched the daylights out of him weeks later, made his cheek throb.

She struck at him then, him and his Digimon with herself and her Digimon and it didn't make sense because the two of them were blindingly  _fast_  and in sync in a way he hadn't seen since...

Well, since himself.

And it scared the hell out of him.

So he got angry, because that always worked with his partner. He responded best to anger and together they swung heavy blows that would knock anyone else at this level to their knees but at best was danced around like a ballroom waltz.

Needless to say, he lost that fight. He lost it badly.

"Nice moves," he panted, reaching to shake her hand.

She raised an eyebrow and shook it, small fingers clashing against his heavy palm like ballet shoes tapping on a floor. "I was clumsy," she replied. "Not quite as badly as you," she amended as she pulled her hand away. "But a klutz never the less."

"Do you always take compliments like a Tankdramon?" he hissed, amused and irritated with her.

She smirked in reply. "Wouldn't be me if I didn't." She touched her Digivice to her right hand and held it out to him. "Sayo."

He mimicked the gesture with his left and grinned. "Koh."

He could get to like her.


	3. III

III.

Don't let go.

Don't let go of my hand or you'll definitely fall.

You won't.

I already did.

Never too late to try again, is it?

We wouldn't be here if it was.


	4. IV

IV.

The walls went up and she whimpered from behind them.

It scared him because he could hear her from where he was laying in bed that night. He could hear her voice crying out in pain and someone laughing and in turn his own head trying to split open like something was trying to carve its way in.

No, like something was trying to claw its way out.

When the walls went up, he panicked because they weren't really walls, just stolen data that broke connections to the outside world, to supplies, so shelters, to missing, hurt Digimon.

Their lives were on a clock and the enemy knew it.

It hurt so badly to know that, to know that trapped feeling. It hurt so much that when he found the thing that made the walls, he didn't care that there was fire around his hands and that he had claws and he was suddenly sinking his nails into a skull-shaped egg that wasn't an egg.

He didn't care.

This thing had done something evil.

Justice needed to be claimed.

When he had driven it away, he had noticed it was purple. Purple like Sayo's patchwork clothes, purple like her eyes when they weren't red like his city's channels of code.

It was purple, and smirking.

And it made his skin crawl.

So did she.


	5. V

V.

"Talk."

"This isn't the way you ask a woman out."

Her smile was as carefree and casual as a crescent moon. It was now, had been in their first fight, in their second fight where she had punched the life out of him until he was dangling from a tree with his red wings losing feathers and blue eyes ringed with black. She was someone who took all or nothing seriously.

It was what he loved about her, sometimes.

"I'm asking you for answers!" he snapped instead. He didn't have an axe like her, which her fingers were playing with the pole of like it was a toy instead of capable of chopping off his head. But he did have a higher healing factor without the use of a pool. "What are we? The others can't do this... weird trash data shit. I've checked! I've asked Litton and the most his Soul can do is hold the CITY together! WHAT AM I?" He gestured to himself, to the tattered wings and cracked hands that were burning the air. "What... what are you, Sayo?"

She chuckled, kissed his cheek, and danced away like the rabbit she was. "Ask the broken murals, Koh. They have the answers."

"So do you!" he snapped, pulling back a fist cloaked in the strength of stars.

Sayo giggled. "I'm too fickle to give you the right ones." With a tap of her digivice, she was gone again, into the darkness, into the red-stained darkness.

He swore and screamed and lit a cigarette. Nothing made sense.


	6. VI

VI.

Everywhere he hunted her, there was red.

Red and black, the contrast of the brightest color of his Union Home and the darkest color of the world she inhabited.

Dead red, corpse red but by the time he arrived there were never any corpses  _(because he was too damn slow and they both could smell that failure all over him)_ but there were always battle scars.

He was always asked to investigate her, always asked to hunt her down. Glare always said him, even though every time he grabbed her jacket, she was gone and he was up a tree, being glared at for five seconds until she was all smiles and humming like she hadn't hurt him, hadn't nearly killed him because he failed to catch you.

"Some lion you are."

Always her parting shot, and it made a fire within him burn and hate and squirm with the idea of ripping out her trachea.

Another part of himself would always laugh at it though.

He hated that part even more.


	7. VII

VII.

_Another illegal FARM unit decimated. Thousands of captivity bred Digimon now without partners and without survival methods raised into them, it's expected that three hundred of the freed will die within the next week._

_CITY walls still remain up, keeping the Darkmoon and Sunshine sectors cut off from themselves, and from the most part, the outside world._

_Tamer Homes are still connected thanks to adjustments made by NaviDigimon. How much longer will that be the case?_

He turned off the television and spat. "Tell me something I don't know."

The word  _FARM_  made his stomach flip and Koh rolled over on his bed, looking at the cracked screen of his digivice.

He was  _never_ going into one of those portals again.

Why was everything bad in his life colored purple?

"Your healing factor can't fix that."

He really shouldn't have been surprised. "How'd you hack this?"

She was smirking; she didn't wear many other faces. "Unlike some, I don't believe in chivalry." The bed squeaked with her weight, not that it was much. "You know, you don't need it. That little device. We don't need it at all. It's so limiting." She turned the television back on again and hummed, tracing his tan cheek with a pale finger. "So cute how much and how little they tell you on these channels."

"I could say the same thing about you."

"You could," she agreed, twirling a purple lock of hair. "I shouldn't be around you at all. Everyone left on my side of the CITY is calling you people evil. But... I've always enjoyed a fair bit more freedom than most."

He wanted to grab her finger, to break it, to kiss it, to chew on it like a snack. But he couldn't move because his body was still sore from nearly being cut in half by a swarm of Phantomon and crashing into Digitamamon and bothering to try seemed like blasphemy. "You mean, your Julia's leash for you is too long."

"Chewed off," she corrected. "I serve her out of my own interests, not the Union's or for her own."

"What interests you, you jumpy hare?"

Sayo licked her lips and pinched at his ear. "Survival. I'm the prey, you're the predator. And you," she giggled. "Are just too comfy in that spot above me!"

He wanted to throttle her for her fickle mysteriousness, but she was already gone, leaving him to sulk on his bed.

_If I'm the predator, how do you keep eating me?_


	8. VIII

VIII.

The second fight they had ever had was one of brutality and fury.

He was injured, his partner was bleeding red goop from one fist, and his opponent was on his knees. Newton, a kid who had been nothing in the tournaments, was less than nothing now. Glazed eyes, cold focus, his Digimon a crumpled heap of Taser Legos by his feet, but he was still poised to launch himself forward like an animal.

Then again, Koh was perfectly ready to do the same thing. The betrayal was welling up like bubbles of hot air, and he wanted to sink teeth into that little bastards sinewy neck. They were Union Tamers! Attacking one of their own... even their rivals, with a metal bat, he couldn't allow that to happen.

He couldn't let them get away with it!

He lunged and for a moment thought he tasted something wet and coppery at his tongue but soon after he was flying, falling into vines that wrapped around him with such force and venom.

"Move," he spat, because she was the one that punched him with her glowing gloves.

Sayo just looked amused. "Make me, lion cub."

And he tried, ripping the vines off with the sound of tearing paper. He tried hard to make her budge, but the most she did was kick into his ribs with both feet and stab him with an arrow of ice.

That is, until he caught her hands.

"Traitor!" he had roared into her face, blue flames running up her arms when he should have grabbed one of those petite ankles and broken it, stopped her little hopping so he could break her neck and-

What was the matter with him?

He stopped, but she didn't, still smiling.

"My poor lion and his hesitation."

When he woke later, his jaw was swollen and he had three broken ribs.


	9. ix

IX.

"You're not handling this well."

"I would be if you  _told_  me anything."

"You should already know."

Sayo's small form was purposefully set far away from him, far from his anger, from the fangs growing in his mouth and the disgusting drool that he didn't feel bothered to wipe away with his hand -paw?-. She held an axe now, the axe looped over one shoulder like a toy.

"Why do you and I don't?"

She giggled. "Woman's intuition." She had nothing to fear. If she was insane, if she wasn't human, it wouldn't matter. That was the kind of girl that Sayo was, the kind of  _being_ the Tamer was. He only had seen her Digimon once and they still seemed to be there, still gelled with her in a way his didn't anymore because he was always angry and running from place to place because he didn't know where he was supposed to be. Even if she wasn't a normal Tamer, they didn't care because she was  _Sayo_  and that meant she could get out of anything because she wasn't afraid of what was there.

And he was. He was scared.

"Damn you," he whispered, balling his hands so tightly they bled and he pushed off the ground with enough strength to dent the earth and fire him towards her.

The last words he heard were, "You aren't asking the right people the right questions."


	10. X

X.

They kept disappearing.

Her footsteps, his friends, his chief.

His chief.

He had known the man before he had met his parents.

He had known the man before he had met his partners, and that was just unheard of.

He had no memories of his time before the chief and until now that had never puzzled him.

His memories didn't keep disappearing. They were just gone. They were just non-existent.

Like the answers Sayo had to his questions. Or the ones she wanted to give anyway.

He knew rabbits were always tricksters, like knights always fell from their posts. That was why Night Claws followed a dark knight and why Sayo was always fleet-footed and everything sinful about the shadows.

What if she was evil, after all?

What if that thing that screamed about ripping her apart was right to do it?

What if he was insane?

Considering his NaviDigimon was cowering from him in the next room, that was likely, at least.

His chief had the answers. But he wasn't here.

Glare was missing, maybe dead.

_If he's dead then I have no one left to lose but my friends._

For some reason, this made him laugh.


	11. XI

XI.

"Don't Koh."

"Damn it, get out of the way!"

"You can't make me move, lion cub."

"What, will you cut me down instead?"

Sayo didn't answer, merely kept her arms spread wide, blocking the chief from the range of his fists, blocking him from taking the man and ripping him to pieces of steak he could burn to charcoal.

"YOU KNOW WHAT HE DID!"

She nodded. However, she didn't move. "You don't want to do this," she said. She wasn't smiling. The rabbit was always supposed to be smiling. "He saved you!"

"He didn't tell me anything! He should have! I-" He raised a fist wrapped in fire. "Move!"

"Make me, lion cub!"

He moved towards her, fist hitting her in the stomach. "Stop calling me that!" She coughed and he punched again. "Move! MOVE DAMN YOU!"

Her feet didn't skid on the ice, and her arms remain spread. "Oh, lion," she sang. "Your roar has become a  _whisper_."

"SHUT UP!"

He wanted to hate her, wanted to hurt her, to kill her.

And he was going to do it.

She smiled at his flame, the flames that weren't orange anymore but velvet blue and rich black. "Oh, Koh," she whispered. "It's not me you're angry at, it's you."

In his rage, he almost listened. Then his vision wavered, and he found the ground rushing towards his face.

She had played him, knocked him out.

He was relieved.


	12. XII

XII.

Years before, when there was only the beginnings of the Tamer Union Koh fought for, there was an experiment, an experiment meant to unite humanity and Digimon as equals in life. It was abandoned.

Years before, there were Digimon who fought in a great battle against the abandoned results of that project, working with a human child who they called Tamer and friend.

Years before, that human had a FARM, where he raised young Digimon who had lost their path, and was entrusted with the eggs of two warriors who had endured horrible suffering, and needed to be made whole.

The kind human attempted to fulfill this task, and nearly would have succeeded.

But the young sun egg was stolen from his arms, and he was left to die. The human lived, but only by a thread.

The other egg, the egg of the moon, hatched alone. Alone, it made an unorthodox choice, in order to survive.

And the egg of the sun?

It reaped the consequences of that choice.


	13. XIII

XIII.

He awoke in his bed, with Glare at his side. Chief Glare, who had been close to his father, his role model, the kindest man he had ever knew.

Chief Glare, his kidnapper and the person who had transformed him.

The man wasn't looking at him at all, but his partner, that loyal, pure Digimon, was. She didn't speak, merely nodded minutely from behind her mask. He wanted to speak, but he couldn't move.

_'She almost killed you, Koh. Even for what you are, it was a deadly dance of an attack.'_

He wished he could raise his lips to spit at her. Her concern was a lie.

_'He is so sorry, Koh. You know this. He didn't recognize the things that he did as wrong.'_

He wanted to scream. This was the man who had preached to him of justice and honor. This was the man who, as a small child, he had heard rage against certain scientists and the injustice they rained upon innocent Digimon, who headed operations to smash their experiments himself! This was the man who never even let a cookie from the jar go unnoticed.

_'I'm not saying forgive him, Koh, but you must remember who he is, before you try to remember who you are.'_

Koh didn't care who Glare was anymore.

The man had never cared to tell him who  _he_ was.

Glare had never cared to tell him  _what_ he was.

Then again, shouldn't he have suspected it? All the anger, all the conflicting savagery and hunger to break bones? He was a monster.

He was a Digimon.


	14. XIV

XIV.

"Melodramatics look funny on you."

"Shut up, Sayo."

She giggled. "Say my name again, lion cub. It sounds weird from you."

He wished he could tell her to go away, but that would make him alone. No matter how angry he was at Glare, he couldn't be alone right now. His Digivice was confiscated, as though it would make a difference. "How is it  _I'm_ on house arrest when  _you're_ the one who tried to kill me?" It wasn't like he could do much anyway, house arrest aside.

"I'm a rabbit; it's a specialty to get out of silly situations," she said, flopping in one of his chairs. "You should really talk to him."

"He turned me into a human and never said anything."

Sayo shrugged. "You act like it's ruined your life."

"I don't know what it's done!" he shouted, rolling to glare at her, pain in his ribs going ignored. "i'm supposed to be a what? A Child? A hybrid? One of those things that gets prodded at in the zoo?"

"Well," she said, raising an eyebrow. "You're certainly supposed to be more regal." He fumed, wishing to reach over and crush her windpipe. He should have expected this from her by now, and he did. It didn't make it piss him off any less. "Honestly, Koh, you should be happy. He loves you, you know."

"He  _lied_ to me."

"Par for the parenting course."

"Can't you be on my side for once?"

She shook her head. "With us, there have always been no sides, Koh. You don't remember that." Sayo leaned close, kissed his forehead, and stepped away. "No sides, no loyalties, just ties. I looked out for the interests of the children I would never have, and the love I would never accept. You took all beneath your canopy and treasured them within your soul. It was your downfall, and mine as well."

Sayo left his bedside. "I'm just paying you back for that... with a little interest."

He wasn't even surprised that she disappeared after that.


	15. XV

V.

"Going to hit me?"

Koh scowled. "No, sir."

Glare raised an eyebrow. "Sir, is it?"

"Yeah, it is." His hands were stuffed into his uniform jean pockets. He glared at the man, at the calm way he stood in front of the grand monitor. "Until I can tell what's a lie and what ain't, it is."

"You trust Sayo more than me, now?"

"Yeah." Koh snorted. "Cause all she cares about is herself."

"That's a lie in itself."

Koh spat. "This is coming from you." He shook his head. "You're my commanding officer. I respect you for that. But I don't trust you. I trust Sayo to be acting in whatever interest piques her bunny-brain. I don't know what you're after, but the walls are still up, and you're the one plotting to take them down. So, I'll listen to you."

Glare smiled. "Good words, little man."

Koh turned away, hiding the pleased flush that ran up his face. "What's the first order?"

His commander smirked. "Patrol for fugitives." Koh shrugged and nodded, preparing to leave the room. "Koh."

"What?"

"She cares about you too."


	16. XVI

XVI.

"Good work, the pair of you."

Koh murmured a thanks to the strange angel. He had nothing against the guy, even though he was high on Glare's trustworthy list. The Digimon was a bit off his rocker, though, no doubt about it.

Not nearly as off the rocker as Sayo, who now that the mission was over, was as chipper and inscrutable as a mascot suit character.

"Can you stop with the humming?" he snapped. Over the weeks of working with her, of actually consciously tapping into his own ability, his hearing had grown more sensitive. He had noticed she was nearly always effing humming like she actually had headphones in her sensitive ears.

She didn't answer, instead clicked through the settings on the Digivice she didn't need and went splashing into a nearby puddle. She laughed and laughed, a child, a bigger child than he was.

He still couldn't beat her, but he was getting better.

"One day I'm going to hit you without you screwing me over."

Sayo laughed. "You'll always pounce with too big paws, lion cub!"

"I'm older than you!"

"Oh and that means anything to a rabbit?"

He would keep an eye on her, because the moment her interests changed, the moment they aligned with something evil, he would tear her from the moonlit sky she danced in.

For now, he would try and appreciate the worth of the shadows. It wasn't going to be easy, though.


End file.
